My database is about 4 Mbyte as I'm purging adn vacuuming some data after 48 hours which are less important.

--- Quote ---i have wondered if a router-linux might be a better starting-point than TC.. am interested in 'remote' updating too.. think this would be a better approach?--- End quote ---

It depends on. TC is not ported to ARM or MIPS yet. You can do it yourself of course, but if your main goal is to develop an applications it is better to use already existing routers which are available for others easily.

curaga:
OT, but node.js is both slow and a RAM hog:http://blog.monkey-project.com/2012/03/13/duda-web-services-framework-for-monkey/http://edsiper.linuxchile.cl/blog/2011/11/08/monkey-nodejs-when-where/

It really has no business running on something with 64mb RAM, no matter how light the base distro. Even Apache would be lighter, unless all of your server-side logic is in Javascript and requires node.

Python is also not that light, but you probably know that.

OT2: Mini 2440 looks to be quite bad for the price of 100$, 400MHz ARM9 + 64mb ram + 1gb flash, given that you can get an ARM netbook for less with better specs.

If you post your requrements, perhaps we can point towards a lighter server ;)

bmarkus:
I have no problem running a multitasking Python 2.6 program with three processes in 32Mbyte RAM including sqlite database. I have never tried, but lighthttpd is available in OpenWrt repo.

curaga:
@bmarkus: Please post how much RAM they take, out of curiosity. Both according to top and "pmap -d $PID | tail -n1"

mb0:
@curaga: absolutely not OT- appreciated, it can be pretty hard to find RAM stats aside from testing. I am using socket.io, that is why node.js, for event-based push-to-clients websocket stuff, not just vanilla web serving (thats what nginx is for). I understand the latest nginx supports websockets.. so that might be somewhat possible to use.. but socket.io has heartbeats and comprehensive fallbacks. Tornado/Twisted could be used.. but being python i was assuming it would be using even more memory?? NB that typical use will be low single-digit users- so whilst latency and initial ram use is important, supporting 20K concurrent connections- and how memory use scales with users- is not so much.Yes, i know python isn't so light.. i'm not aware of any easy way of making it lighter (eg pypy uses way more memory) without rewriting in C(/++) or something, which is very much a last resort. (not really knowing C).

@bmarkus: have you found a point at which the sqlite database becomes so big as to be a problem performance wise? How many rows makes up your 4MB?

I would be using either OS (router eg openwrt, or MC) as a 'starting point' and hacking stuff out, etc.

As for the board, it is for development.. ARM9 are cheaper to produce (for a non-megacorp) than anything else that could do the job AFAICT, so if you know of a cheaper arm9 system (4-500mhz) with similar 'support' then i'm all ears. I'm not aware of any routers with these specs (+usb, 64MB ram) for less, either. The nokia N770 comes close, but its only a 200mhz arm9.

E: qemu is a possibility (which may be able to rule in/out arm9 as a viable platform).. although i've struggled to get to grips with it so far, being unfamiliar with both it, and cross compiling. Perhaps if i can find an arm9 image from which to start from??